The Japanese Information Systems Discipline: ISSJ, Kaoru Sunada's Information Systems Evolution Theory, and the Sociotechnical Lineage from Tavistock to Tokyo

Abstract

The Japanese Information Systems Society (情報システム学会 / ISSJ), founded April 23, 2005 under the intellectual leadership of the late Shōji Ura (浦昭二), institutionalized a distinct Japanese intellectual tradition that v0.2 of this survey under-characterized. The tradition is best understood not as a Western IS / Japan branch but as a parallel construction with three independent foundations: (a) Tomonobu Imamichi's Eco-Ethica (生圏倫理学, proposed 1973 in Varna), which provided the ethical-philosophical foundation and was the inaugural special lecture at ISSJ's 2005 founding meeting; (b) Tōru Nishigaki's Fundamental Informatics (基礎情報学), which provided the informational ontology (the three-layer model of life-information → social-information → machine-information); and (c) the Western sociotechnical-systems lineage (Tavistock / Mumford / Land), which provided the design methodology vocabulary. ISSJ founding member Nakajima Monta (中嶋聞多) explicitly identified Imamichi and Nishigaki as the discipline's two theoretical pillars. The discipline crystallizes in 2025–2026 through Kaoru Sunada's (砂田薫, International University GLOCOM) trajectory: her 2025 monograph Information Systems Evolution Theory: Escaping the Technical Worldview Toward a Future That Nurtures Humans and her 2026-05-23 ISSJ 20th-anniversary symposium lecture, which synthesizes twenty years of accumulated thinking with seven implementation cases (Denmark, post-Tōhoku earthquake IT volunteers, Iwaki phase-free disaster IT, Asahi Tekkō human-centered DX, NEC AI negotiation agent, Shiojiri inclusive telework, Philippine inclusive fintech, Yokohama Rōsai "Yamamoto-style AI") and a fluent re-positioning of AI as the 25th General Purpose Technology (following computer at 20th, internet at 22nd). The survey draws on 85 Perplexity Sonar queries (51 original + 34 supplementary) and the user's eight curated memo documents totaling 138 KB. This v0.3 substantially revises v0.2 to incorporate Imamichi and Nishigaki and the seven Sunada cases.

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